How To Stick To Good Habits And Become Disciplined
Be Consistent And Make Use Of The 8th Wonder Of The World
“Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement“
— James Clear
Why Should We Be Patient And Stick To Our Habits?
Contrary to what most people believe, we know that willpower, motivation, and disciplining ourselves are not reliable.
They are tools that you might use every now and then, but they are not suitable for a long term strategy to achieve your goals.
What we need to do is implement good habits.
Discipline and consistency will then be a byproduct of our habits and newly adopted identity.
So we know that implementing good habits is important.
But why is it so important to actually stick to these habits over months and years?
The Eighth Wonder of the World
“Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it … he who doesn’t … pays it.”
— Albert Einstein
To understand how the idea of the compound interest applies to habits, let’s look at some characteristics we humans have in common:
Looking at these graphs, created by consulting expert Sam Ovens, shows that our memory fades quickly over time, in an exponentially downward sloping curve.
The effect of our actions, however, behaves the total opposite. It usually needs a lot of time to accumulate.
Think about the compound interest on your savings portfolio or how the development of wealth or YouTube subscribers for most successful people look like.
It takes a lot of time to notice an effect but once it starts to compound, the effect takes on an exponential curve.
The problem is that when we start new habits, we usually don’t see a lot of immediate effects.
Take the example of meditation. Most people quit after a couple of weeks, saying they did not notice any effect.
Our memory is strong, the effect is not visible, so we start to believe that meditation does not work.
However, if we stick to the habit, at some point it will start to compound. We will notice how much more present we are and notice how much our life has changed after all these years.
Once we notice these effects, our memory of what caused it has faded. We might think that we just have matured or that some event in our life situation like a promotion or our friends is responsible for that.
However, we forget that it was the initial decision many years ago to sit down and meditate regularly.
In the end, we might even abandon the things that have worked for us and made these effects possible.
This leads us to the core idea of why it is so important to stick to your habits.
James Clear summarizes perfectly in “Atomic Habits”:
“It is only when looking back two, five, or perhaps ten years later that the value of good habits and the cost of bad ones becomes strikingly apparent.”
That’s why it is so important to look at your current trajectory and whether we have the right habits in place than at the results that we are currently getting.
They will determine where we’ll end up in ten, twenty years from now.
The Plateau Of Latent Potential
One idea that illustrates this is what James Clear calls the “Plateau of Latent Potential.”:
“Small changes often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold. The most powerful outcomes of any compounding process are delayed. You need to be patient.”
This is the threshold, up to which you feel like nothing is happening.
Take the example of a stonecutter. He keeps hammering at the stone, hit after hit, nothing happens.
Only after the 100th hit, the stone finally breaks.
Was it the last hit that broke the stone?
No. It was the accumulation of all the hits before that. The final hit broke through the Plateau of Latent Potential.
In Atomic Habits, James gives another great example:
Complaining about not achieving success despite working hard is like complaining about an ice cube not melting when you heated it from twenty-five to thirty-one degrees. Your work was not wasted; it is just being stored. All the action happens at thirty-two degrees. When you finally break through the Plateau of Latent Potential, people will call it an overnight success. …
Look at many famous actors, artists, and athletes. They usually got famous for one specific movie, book or competition. But this is only when they broke through the Plateau of Latent Potential.
What for us looks like an overnight success was not one thing but the small repetitions before that.
All the times writing every day, going to acting classes, rehearsing scripts or putting in the reps during their training.
The same is true for the small habits that we implement.
Whether it’s writing, meditation, going to the gym, reaching out to prospects or growing your YouTube channel.
It’s about having the persistence to put in the work despite no immediate result and have the patience to wait for the breakthrough.
We Are Not Made For Long-Term Thinking And Patience
Why is that very often so difficult for us?
The short answer is that we have an ancient mind but live in a modern environment.
We evolved in an immediate return environment. During our hunter-gatherer times, which shaped much of our evolution, we did not have to prepare much for the future.
We were focused on the present and on getting food and shelter right now. Our survival depended on it. We needed instant gratification.
And our brains are still the same. Just think of what happens when you see a cookie. Your lizard brain just wants you to eat the cookie because it’s better for survival to have those calories now than later.
However, now we live in a delayed return environment. All the things we see as beneficial for us in a sustainable way are delayed.
Whether it is getting a degree, maintaining a healthy diet or saving for retirement.
We want to get long-term results, but also short-term rewards.
So what do we do about it?
How To Maintain Your Habits
We need to work with our inclination to get a form of immediate result.
To be able to stay persistent we need some visual reminder that shows us how far we have come already.
Having that in place gives us a short term feeling of satisfaction and allows us to be persistent even if we don’t have long-term results yet.
This reminder comes in the form of some measurement that gives us feedback on our progress and use that feedback to keep going and create the next behavior.
“What gets measured gets managed.”
- Peter Drucker
The same is true for our habits. We need to observe and measure them. This means gathering data and making sense of it.
Examples:
Health
- How often did you go to the gym? How did the workouts go? How often and long did you run this week?
- What did you eat? How did your weight develop over the last two weeks?
- How often and for how long did I meditate last week?
Business
- How much time did you spend last week reaching out to new clients? How much in having calls and pitching your services?
- How many words did you write per day?
Social
- How many new people did you talk to last week?
- How many friends did you reach out to last week?
- How much time did you spend with family/friends last week?
How To Make Progress Visible
Once we know what kind of habit we want to track, we can and should make the progress visible.
This gives us a feeling of accomplishment that motivates us to stay on track.
Let’s take the example of doing something uncomfortable or challenging like doing sales calls or reaching out to potential clients.
One idea is to take two bins or boxes and put in as many coins or paper clips as the number of people you want to talk to.
Every time you reach out to someone, you move a coin or paper clip from one bin to the other.
You are only allowed to stop working until all of them have moved. This is an instant visual feedback loop that shows you your progress and keeps you motivated.
Another very common way to do that is to use a habit tracker.
They can come in many forms. There are many apps like Momentum, Way of Life or Coach.me that prompt you to check in every time you do the habit and thus create a little chain.
You can also use a simple Google sheet, and arrange it in the same way.
The disadvantage of these apps or sheets is that they might not be easily visible and only prompt you when you open them.
An alternative is to put a big sheet of paper on the wall or write it on a whiteboard, positioning them where you always see them.
This also works great for tracking your weight every morning. You have a visual reminder of both tracking it but also your progress.
This can also be done for habits that don’t take place every day, for example exercising three days per week. You let the chains run down for each week.
Don’t Break The Chain
Once you get started and focus on tiny steps to build up momentum, you will build up a little streak, a little chain.
Then your only focus should be on keeping the streak alive. Don’t break the chain.
It does not matter how long you do your habit or how high you set the bar.
Meditate two minutes. Eat one piece of fruit. Do a quick home workout routine. Write only one sentence in your journal. Read only one page. Contact only one new potential client.
Just focus on showing up, no more zero days.
All these things are better than doing nothing. And very important, you keep up the momentum and the consistency.
And what most people forget:
You strengthen and keep your new identity.
Those small steps give you new evidence that “you are a person that meditates”, “that you are a person who exercises” “that you are a person who reads every day.”
James Clear calls it “casting votes” for the type of person you want to become.
Even if it takes only one minute. It is a vote. Over time these votes accumulate and change the way you see yourself.
Never Miss Twice
Your focus should be on keeping the streaks alive, but sometimes life gets in the way and you miss one day. That is not a big deal.
Your mantra should then be to “never miss two times in a row.”
Focus on immediately getting back on track, no matter how small the next step.
This helps to avoid the black and white thinking that once we break our streak everything is lost.
This is what happens to many people once they cheat on their healthy diet by eating a cookie. They then tell themselves that now the day is ruined anyway and start binging.
James summarized it like this:
I know that it’s not a big deal if I make a mistake or slip up on a habit every now and then. It’s the compound effect of never getting back on track that causes problems. By setting a schedule to never miss twice, you can prevent simple errors from snowballing out of control.
Just get over it and don’t miss twice.
How To Get Back On Track
So how do we make sure we get back on track and don’t miss a second time?
The first idea is to reduce the required steps, just as mentioned above, to make it easy for you to build up momentum again.
The second idea is to use “if/then statements”.
“If I fail to do something then I do this instead.”
The big idea is to prepare for challenges in advance and use slipping on your good habit or falling for your bad habit as a trigger to get back on track.
For example, you make eating an unhealthy meal work as a trigger to follow up with a healthy one.
“If I eat an unhealthy meal then my next meal will always be a healthy one.”
“If I miss my workout on Wednesday then I will be in there on Thursdays.
“If I wake up half an hour late then I will go to bed half an hour earlier.”
“If I don’t finish my most important task of the day then I will work on it first thing in the morning the next day.”
What “if/then statements” you can come up to prepare for challenges in advance?
Back Up Habits
On a similar note, come up with “back up habits”, that achieve the same goal when you cannot do your main habit.
If you can’t make it to the gym, you could do a quick home workout routine, go for a run or do some sprints.
If you missed your meditation routine, you can do a one-minute body-scan.
If you run out of healthy food, have some healthy takeaway or order options ready.
What back-up habits can you prepare to be more flexible?
How Long Does It Take To Make A Habit Stick?
Research says it depends on the situations and the habit.
While a simple habit might only take 21 days, other habits take many months.
On average the study came up with 66 days.
Research also showed that if you miss it once, it didn’t influence the habit building process. So get rid of the black and white thinking and focus on getting back on track.
Consistency trumps perfectionism.
Summary
To make your habits sustainable and be able to maintain them, habits need to be:
- Repeated (focus on consistency and showing up)
- Resilient (just get back on track if you miss once, “never miss twice” rule, if/then statements, “back-up” habits)
- Reinforcing (know the long-term benefits, build them on top of each other and let them be in line with your desired identity)
This will allow you to maintain your good habits as well as become consistent and disciplined.
And this is what will compound. Stay patient and reap the benefits in the long-run.
Which habit are you going to stick to from now on?
